It’s Criminal – Documentary about Economic Divide in USA to Premiere at Los Angeles Women’s International Film Fest

It’s Criminal – Documentary about Economic Divide in USA to Premiere at Los Angeles Women’s International Film Fest

March 16, 2017 – Norwich, VT – The upcoming feature-length documentary film, IT’S CRIMINAL, will make its world premiere at the Los Angeles Women’s International Film Festival. This relevant and timely documentary delves into privilege, poverty and injustice by exploring the divide between women at an elite college and women incarcerated in jail.

IT’S CRIMINAL will premiere on Sunday, March 26 at 3 p.m. PT at L.A. Live Regal Cinemas, 800 W Olympic Boulevard, Los Angeles. Immediately following the screening, IT’S CRIMINAL Director and Producer Signe Taylor will join a panel featuring formerly incarcerated women, Ivy League students, and Dartmouth College professors to explore the growing economic divide in the United States and to discuss ways to bridge the gap.

Shot in an intimate verite style, IT’S CRIMINAL shares the poignant journeys of incarcerated women and Dartmouth College students working together to write and perform an original play about the lives of the imprisoned women. The film captures the humanity of both the students, in all their privilege, and the prisoners, who are heartbreakingly articulate about the lack of economic and legal justice in the USA.

“I was inspired to collaborate with Pati Hernandez to create this class because I wanted to make students more aware of their privilege and also shed light on the overwhelming number of people incarcerated in the United States,” says Ivy Schweitzer, the Dartmouth College professor whose class is featured in the film. “We focused on a female jail because the number of women in jail is growing much faster than any other correctional population.”

“I believe people in this country lead quite segregated lives,” adds Pati Hernandez, the founder of the non-profit organization Telling My Story which inspired the class and the film. “And we need to break down those walls between privilege and poverty and work to empower those behind bars.”

IT’S CRIMINAL contains moments of remarkable intensity: a prisoner sobbing helplessly as she loses custody of a child; a prisoner high on drugs in front of others who are struggling to remain sober; a student breaking down and weeping as she realizes the enormity of her privilege. By focusing on the poignant real-life stories of three prisoners and two students, whose lives are forever changed by meeting each other, IT’S CRIMINAL deftly weaves the voices of the Haves and Have-nots into a searing indictment of the justice system in the United States.

“I’m honored to show IT’S CRIMINALat the Los Angeles International Women’s Film Festival and look forward to sharing it with the film community. I hope they are inspired by our message of equal justice for all women,” says Director Signe Taylor.